Physician Healer
Hope
“Hope springs eternal” as the old cliché goes. We are told that hope keeps us alive and that without it, we just shrivel up and die. We are taught to believe, that if there is no hope, then what’s the point? This past week, I thought a lot about this particular word as I found myself making these huge lists of events I was “hoping” would happen or things I was “hoping” to get. In the last 2 weeks especially, I found myself using that word so frequently, my head felt heavy and so I stopped, released my “hope”agenda, and instead, took a different direction entirely.
I was reminded of a different side of “hope” after reading about manifesting what you want in life or what you want to happen in your life. For some people in personal growth journeys, hope is considered weak and implying a state of lack, a situation in which you don’t have what you really want—yet or what you want to happen isn’t happening the way you were hoping—yet. You’re waiting in a forever line that never gets any shorter.
The other problematic facet of hope is that it is overused in our daily conversations with self and with others. This week I noted that much of the personal growth literature talks about “hope” as being a perpetual let down, setting us up to fail repeatedly. It’s like a hamster wheel of disappointment with the good ol’ carrot dangling and we just keep running, round and round we go, hoping for something that may never come. Is this too harsh a punishment for this word that means for most of us a tool for optimism? Apparently, “hope” is not all that it’s cracked up to be.
In truth, I had wishes and desires for certain things to manifest but found myself avoiding the sentence, “I hope…” because I felt that the more that came out of my mind, the more I said it, the further my goals seem to drift away out of my reach. I realized that every time we hope for something, we are messaging the universe that that part of us is empty, missing something.
Deep down inside, we kind of know at times that there is a slim chance of success, but for a brief moment, saying, “I hope…” seems to give us some comfort, some glimmer of happiness. Sometimes, however, hope gives away our power, that we are at the mercy of good old fashioned luck. Our authentic power is in our unique ability to be okay with whatever is going on right now without labeling it, applying emotion to it or desiring to change it. But, we also have to remember that happiness is not synonymous with joy either.
The latter, according to Eckhart Tolle is one of the states of being that arises inside of us, a state that is already there for us to unfold and discover, not chase after. Happiness requires an outcome, a result. It is conditional. Happiness comes when our expectations are met. “I’ll be happy when…, or I’ll be happy if…” It seems as though most of us are always desperately “chasing” after happiness when joy is already within us. Joy is already there if just sit quietly and give ourselves permission to feel it; if we only just look inside with our heart and listen with our soul, we would feel joy flow.
This week I felt heavy in my head and in my chest and it finally started to let up when I accessed several podcasts that popped up, in which Kyle Cease suggested that sometimes we just need to stop doing and just rest. In this culture-scape, the idea of resting seems to imply that we are lazy and that nothing is accomplished but resting does have a very important purpose. It allows us to reset the mind, body and spirit so that we can thrive as beings with coherence instead of fragmented beings.
He suggested why not just sit quietly in meditation and let thoughts come through us. Perhaps during the time that we are sitting, discoveries about ourselves show up, telling us more about who we are that we may not have known before. He mentioned that frequently, he hears that people remark that during meditation, as soon as thoughts come, they talk about getting rid of them so that they can get back to the quietness and clarity of the mind. That’s not how it works.
Meditation works because it involves surrendering to what is happening, to everything that is happening right now. The current culture-scape tries to convince us that we can control the outcome of things.
“This is what I want to happen. This is what I think should happen. This is what I hope will happen. What if that doesn’t happen? What will I do then? No, no, it has to happen. I’ll have to think of something to do to force it to happen.”
As if, you ever had control in the first place. We can barely control our own lives and immediate environment. What makes us think we can control other people, their lives, and their decisions, or their actions? I came to realize that what happened was meant to happen or it would not have happened. What will happen will happen because otherwise it will not have happened. For many of us, we believe that certain outcomes “should” happen.
That implies a subjective right and wrong which involves perception. We know how flawed perception can be since it is shaped by everything that has occurred in our childhood. Adults who as children were raised in a supportive and loving home will most likely have a kinder, more forgiving and loving perception of the world around them, including nature, the people and creatures within than adults in which the opposite is true. So, who’s right and who’s wrong? Who’s reason is more right than the other? Who gets to determine that?
And then, there is our old friend, fear. Many are not aware or may not believe that fear governs our entire being and existence unless we are the fortunate “awakened” few who operate with a level of conscious awareness that there is more to this world than what meets the eye. They somehow know that there are forces all around us that can be detected beyond what our 5 senses tell us. Awakened individuals curiously ask when they look around, “Is this all that there is?” These individuals do not concern themselves with daily drama or gossip between people or comparisons with others nor are they worried about what others are doing.
They know they control nothing in life and so they allow life to just flow through them. They also understand that noise and negative intentions create a backlash of karma directed not at their intended targets, but at themselves; so conscious individuals avoid putting out into the universe any sort of negativity in the form of fear, worry, addiction (even compulsive shopping), complaint, anger, sadness, regret, disappointment, frustration, etc. We tend to attract what we think and what we feel, even though we may not want them. If we are worried, then life gives us more to worry about. If we are afraid, life gives us more to be afraid of. It is just the way nature operates. Life mirrors who we are and what we are. Energy circulates like a boomerang.
So, one of the many things I learned this past week was to let go and release my need to wish or hope for certain things, anything. I told myself that whatever comes, comes. Perhaps what I want is not my highest calling. Perhaps something better is on its way, something I need rather than want. Much of the spiritual teachings mention the universe as a force always giving us what we need instead of what we want, because it aligns with our innate purpose of why we are here alive.
If we do not know our purpose, then we find our gifts confusing and frustrating, giving us the illusion that we are failures. One of the most important lessons in life is that what seems to make us feel like we are failing is actually meant to teach us and that if we hold out, we will always find that what the universe gifts us is always so much better than what we wished for in the first place. Everything always works out the way it is supposed to. We may not see the balance of all things, but the universe keeps track of all of it.
In Gary Zukav’s “The Seat of the Soul” he writes about the workings of karma and that our soul is here to learn and evolve. He offers the theory that whatever action we bring about in this lifetime that does not demonstrate reverence (he is not referring to respect as respect is a form of judgment originating from the egoic mind) to others, there will be a payback of sorts in either the current life that we lead or in the next.
And, although we may have tendencies to blame others for certain decisions we may have made, we are still responsible for the energy released governing these intentions. So, actions generated by kind intentions create kinder lessons for our soul than actions generated by mean and cruel intentions, which will eventually lead to more suffering for ourselves.
During the last week, I have resigned myself to releasing all of my wish lists, my organized expectations, whether or not I had good reasons. None of that mattered. I began sitting quietly with no specific agenda for 1, then 2, then 3 hours some days to give my mind time to clear itself so that I could have a hands off approach. I allowed my mind to think whatever it wanted, to remember whatever it wanted and to be clear whenever it wanted. I chose not to interfere. Interference is a form of control and if there were such a thing as labels of bad or good, control would be bad.
And, a very curious thing started happening. The less I did (in terms of physically moving around, looking busy doing and just busy being busy), the more answers and solutions I got, the more messages I got from every possible direction offering ideas and assistance. The solutions and answers that presented themselves to me literally came from everywhere and all I did was just sit longer and longer in silence. It finally dawned on me that all the personal growth instructors were spot on. Sitting still in meditation is actually doing a lot more than physically moving around looking busy.
When we sit, we are able to feel what the next direction in our lives need to be. Sitting in meditation is doing the internal work and the possibilities of outcomes are more vast that anyone can ever imagine. The best explanation is that when we are sitting in the quiet and the stillness, we present our true being of what we are, a beacon of light that shines ever so brightly and a highly sensitive receiver.
It was as if I were this radio antenna catching all the energy frequencies of answers and solutions. What I had hoped for came true only after I had dropped the hope and intense wishes in order to allow whatever needed to happen, happen. Ironically, the secret to having what you have been hoping for is contained in that surrendering of that hope and making way for what is supposed to find you.
Regarding meditation, I am continually asked what is the trick to sitting still for longer than a few minutes with the eyes closed. Like everything else, meditation is easy to learn but you need to practice everyday and like everything else, with practice, it becomes easier and you start to look forward to this intimate personal time with your soul.
I always explain that it really isn’t a trick. You simply have to remember that what keeps us from sitting still is all in the mind, its constant and ever vigilant yet erroneous noise mistaken for important monologue, every topic and excuse are based on fear (anger, frustration, jealousy, impatience, annoyance, demanding, compulsion, rudeness, desperation, addiction, arrogance, entitlement, feelings of superiority and inferiority, as well as judgment of others, to name a few).
Upon final reflection on hoping and wishing, I view hope as a never ending struggle that tends to keep us in constant survival mode plagued by chronic dissatisfaction and unhappiness. It prevents us from seeing and accepting all the beautiful things contained in this moment, the “now” because it isn’t our mental narrative, and they aren’t playing our show.
As a result, it keeps us from accepting what-is, from being aware of the is-ness of now, this very moment according to Tolle, with whatever is going on. Our inclination and tendencies driven and manipulated by the egoic mind are to try and change our destiny at all costs because we don’t agree with it. There is a grand illusion that the egoic mind is spoon feeding us, and that is we have the power to alter what the universe has determined to be inevitable, but in truth we really cannot change what is meant to happen, what is meant to be. And, it is divulged through sitting in our silence and in our stillness with our thoughts.
These thoughts come and go and so therefore do not belong to us, but the mind fools you into thinking they are all true and belong to you. The mind tells you also that there is a reason for everything. It’s just that someone else’s reason may not be your reason. So, even reason is another construct of the mind. Everything that happens does not really have a reason. How do we keep the meddling mind from getting into the cookie jar? Meditate as much as you can. Meditate as long as you can. It is the only way. And, I still ended up finding this out the hard way, despite practicing everyday which I have been for many years.
Below to follow are for those who asked me for additional guidance to quiet sitting (stillness meditation, listening to the silence):
1) The next time you attempt to sit quietly, find a place to sit comfortably without lying down.
2) Close your eyes and take a slow deep breath through your nose and release that breath slowly through your mouth. Do this 2 more times.
3) Then, allow your entire body from the top of the head down to the toes to relax. You can use your inside voice to accomplish this.
4) Just sit there and become aware of the way your body moves as you breathe gently in and exhale gently out. Pay attention to the air that moves through your nostrils and the air that moves out of your mouth.
5) Pay attention to your body position and where you are located. Be aware of the room that you are in and you will notice that the silence draws your attention to the space that is around you.
6) If your mind drifts to the past, let it. If your mind drifts to the future, let it. If something unpleasant comes up, be with it, confront it because it is on its way out. Remember what you resist will persist until you confront it. Become curious instead of reprimanding or fearful.
7) If you start to feel nervous or antsy, instead of immediately opening your eyes and getting up, ask yourself first what you think is trying to come through to be felt and seen and what you think is causing it. Again, get curious. The real reasons tend to show up at this time, which is something that our egoic mind needs—explanations and reasons. Your awareness of just your heartbeat, your breathing, and that you’re alive automatically clears the ego from the field. And, for as long as you can remain aware of just those aspects of you in the here and now, this action frees you from your egoic-mind prison.
8) After a while, the mind does eventually clear itself either during that sitting or the next. Your job is not to predict it or expect anything. You are just present to observe.
9) Extra tip —> you may find it helpful to access on YouTube the following title: “Revealing Both Sides Of the Veil — Kyle Cease.” In this episode, he begins by speaking about accepting what is going on right now and at about the 14 minute mark, he guides the audience quietly into a very simple meditation that goes on for about 40 minutes. This was extracted from one of his weekly live calls for his members.
Committing to a daily meditative practice not only makes it easier, but when serendipitous things start to happen, (and trust me, they do just like other people say they do), you become hyperaware because normal life as we know it just doesn’t gift us with these opportunities, which then serve to positively reinforce us to continue this as a lifelong practice. You then begin to look forward to this time alone all to yourself, excited about what other gifts are forthcoming in your life. Is this magic? I guess you could call it exactly that—magic.
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Thank you for reading and see you next week! Remember to keep journaling on your journey!
Love and gratitude,
Celeste Amaya, MD
